How some data center operators deal with their water usage problems

Other tech giants, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle, have announced in recent months that they are moving away from water cooling to conserve water. This includes a major expansion of OpenAI and Oracle at Stargate in several states, including the water-rich state of Texas.

Google is taking a different approach. On Wednesday, the company made water-related commitments to regions with data centers, along with funding announcements for water-related projects in the US.

It also includes pledges to add more freshwater than the company uses, through local water businesses; increasing the use of reclaimed and recycled water; and disclose annual water usage in data centers. (Other tech companies, including Microsoft, have similar promises about water recycling and local investment. Google has been working on many of these promises for several years.) There is also a promise to use a “data-driven benchmark” to decide which data center designs will work best for local environments.

Ben Townsend, global head of architecture and sustainability at Google, says data center design is more complicated than just swearing by one type of cooling all the time. The company, he says, has been carefully evaluating its facilities for the past four years to determine which types of coolers will work best.

He said: “In some areas there is little water and in other areas it is abundant. “One method alone does not work.”

In April, Google he defended water cooling of areas that are called “abundant” water by writing to the European Union if it is necessary to create a permanent database. Google’s arguments are in line with a new study from Ren and his team, who found that if all data centers in the US adopted some type of water cooling during peak demand, they could free up 10 to 30 gigawatts of power. In areas where the grids have power but water is not available, the use of water cooling can provide guidance in efforts to reduce load.